Welcome to my blog! I hope you enjoy taking a look around. I write historical novels and mysteries including the Inspector de Silva series set in 1930s Ceylon. You'll find interviews with well-known writers here as well as articles reflecting my interests in travel, history and art.
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Thursday, 19 April 2018

I don't usually write this kind of post, but the Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern was so fascinating that I couldn't resist. It focuses on 1932, an important year for the artist. He had turned fifty the previous October and was in great demand. Success had brought him a grand apartment in Paris, an expensive chauffeur-driven car and, last but not least, marriage to the celebrated ballerina, Olga Khokhlova.

Not bad for a man who had been a penniless Spanish immigrant.

But there was a cloud on the horizon. He was worried that he was being looked on as a painter of the past, not the future. He was aware that critics in the Paris art world were openly sidelining him.

His anxiety unleashed a flood of creativity. 1932 saw the creation of more than two hundred paintings as well as sculptures and drawings, mainly executed at Boisgeloup, the chateau in Normandy that he rented for the summer. Beginning with a mood of sensuous exuberance, in particular the desire to rival his friend Matisse, as the year went on, some works reflected the unease of the time. Increasingly, the world was in the grip of economic hardship and the rise of totalitarian regimes.

Many of those works make unsettling viewing. The ones that drew me back were the ones that celebrate life and love. Particular favourites were these beautiful studies of women, one of them with a book in her lap. The exhibition is on until early September. If you chance to be in London, I highly recommend it.

Tuesday, 13 March 2018

The sight of the first daffodil never fails to lift my spirits. When I see that hint of yellow, I know spring is on the way. They've often featured in art, from delicate botanical paintings to wild explosions of colour and life.

Much prized by the Romans who believed the sap had healing powers, they then went out of fashion as cultivated plants until the early seventeenth century. Interestingly, the sap is poisonous to many animals and to other flowers. If you want to put daffodils in a mixed arrangement, first soak the stems in water for 24 hours to remove it.

It's said to be bad luck to give one daffodil, so always give a bunch. In season, daffodils are cheap, so you shouldn't need to stint.

Daffodils have been found to contain a substance called narciclasine. Scientists believe it may help in the treatment of brain cancer.

Friday, 16 February 2018

Who can read about the glory days of train travel without thinking of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express?In the course of researching for my next Inspector de Silva Mystery, where a critical scene takes place on the Kandy-Colombo train, I've loved reading up about those days. I still remember what a treat it was as a teenager when I was allowed to go on the morning train from the country up to London with my late father.

The British rail breakfast was legendary. What could be more delightful than enjoying a good meal on the train while England's green and pleasant land flashed past the window? Dining cars were always beautifully appointed, the snowy tablecloths crisply starched, the service silver and the crockery and cutlery marked with the badge of the line you were travelling on.Training for the smartly uniformed stewards who served passengers was rigorous. It included having to walk repeatedly along a white line painted down the middle of a carriage while the train was in motion to make sure no customer's soup was served into their lap.The first dining car came into service in 1879. The cooking was done over hot coals at the back of the train. At first, there were problems with the food getting covered in soot when the train went through a tunnel, but these were soon overcome, and meals on the train became very popular.Sadly, though, after the railways were privatised dining cars started to die out. The last one ran on the 19.33 from King's Cross to Leeds in May 2011. Passengers were served a valedictory meal of smoked haddock "Arnold Bennett" crepe, rib-eye steak, leg of lamb, or fillets of trout, with blue cheese, apple and walnut strudel or ginger and rhubarb pavlova to follow. Glasses were raised for the last time from a wine list that included fine clarets. This final journey was particularly significant because railway dining had begun on the very same route more than a hundred years previously.

Wednesday, 20 December 2017

I doubt anyone would choose to be a writer if they didn't love words and, for me, there's a particular pleasure in finding ones that have gone out of fashion. The other day, I picked up a novel by Thomas Hardy that I hadn't read for many years and, as I read, a word jumped out at me.

If I say "dumbledore", most people will think of Harry Potter, but clearly Hardy had never heard of the famous boy wizard. I looked up a dictionary of word origins and history, (if you google online etymological dictionary you should find the one I use) and found that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the word was used in West Country dialect to mean a bumblebee.

Other beautifully expressive words I've discovered over this past year are wamblecropt. It means overcome by indigestion, hopefully not too appropriate in the days of festive meals that stretch ahead of us!

Over the party season, I hope you won't be subjected to people who are ultracrepidarian. (Prone to expressing very forceful opinions on subjects about which they know absolutely nothing.)

After a particularly late night, will you indulge in a bit of snudging at the office? The practice of striding around looking enormously busy while doing nothing at all except perhaps checking your Smartphone.

Lastly, when you need a rest from all the excitement, try gongoozling. This is the habit of sitting quietly staring at water. But don't forget to wrap up warm, especially if the weather's foxy. (Misleadingly sunny and bright but in fact freezing cold.)

Thursday, 7 December 2017

I was honoured to be invited to talk about mysteries and Inspector de Silva on Kendall and Cooper Talk Mysteries. Past guests have included bestselling author of cozy mysteries, Laura Child, and the queen of tartan noir, Val McDermid.

Wednesday, 22 November 2017

I'm not all that handy
with a needle myself but I greatly admire those who are so I'm delighted to
welcome keen and skilful quilter, Rosey Moffatt, to the blog. She's kindly
agreed to share some of her knowledge of American Civil War quilts with us, so
over to you, Rosey. It's a pleasure to be here, thank you for inviting me.

The history of the Civil War quilt is about necessity and
need, none more so than for providing comfort for the soldiers during the four
year hardship of the American Civil War.

Having spent a good deal of my life in North America I have
long been fascinated by its history.The
stories of the people who landed on its foreign shores from all over Europe,
persecuted for their non-conformist religious beliefs and forced to forge new
lives in unknown territories are as big a story as was their feat in crossing
those mighty plains and mountains. Those
early pioneers who forged out new lives for themselves and their families and
who settled on a piece of land and struggled to live off of it, living in the
privation of their wagons, or dugouts, before building simple houses, had to
make do with everything they came into contact with. Nothing was wasted.

For warmth against the cold nights, quilts were made out of
any materials they could lay their hands on.I have read much about the early pioneering women who kept home and hearth
together and sewed and quilted together to make warm comforters for their large
families.Although there is much to be
said about these women, this is the background from which quilts were made in
the American Civil War, which lasted from April 12, 1861 when the Confederates
attacked the military installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South
Carolina, to April 9, 1865 when Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to Ulysses
Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.Four years of hostilities and deprivation prevailed.

During these four years, the women at home aided their
soldiers by making them quilts.Soldiers
were not provided for by government, so it was up to the women to provide for
the men going to war.The purpose of
these quilts was to provide Union and Confederate soldiers with warm bedding,
and to fundraise at local fairs for the war effort.Quilts sold at the fairs were often of a
better design, the nicer the design the more money could be raised.Calico was too expensive to purchase, so they
made do, by re-using fabric from old clothing the men left behind before they
went off to battle. Any available fabric
was used, old shirts “shirtings”, old suits, worn-out blankets, denim work clothes,
feed and fertilizer sacks.Laurel Horton
in her article on South Carolina quilts and the Civil War states that
manufactured cloth was generally called Confederate homespun. She claims that none of the makeshift Confederate
quilts are known to survive.The most
basic quilt designs were limited by these fabrics, utility being their express
purpose.It was necessary that they were
put together quickly and simply, and as soldiers died they were often buried in
their quilts, so that very few survive today.It is reckoned that over 250,000 quilts had been made for the Union
soldiers of the American Civil War.

The Unionists of the northern States wore blue uniforms,
whilst the Confederates of the southern “slave” states wore red uniforms.Quilt colours of blues and grays, reds and
browns, reflected these. The typical soldier’s quilt size was 7’4” x 4’ (223cm
x 121cm) which was the size of a soldier’s cot. Block designs were shared amongst quilters,
becoming established designs continued and admired in quilts today.

I have just completed a small Civil War sampler quilt using
typical block designs but adding some of my own colours and fabric patterns.The style and designs are correct.

One of the most famous and intricate commemorative Civil War
quilts, now in the BenningtonMuseum in
Vermont, is one made by Jane A. Stickle in which she embroidered the words “In
War Time. 1868” on it.It is made up of
5,602 pieces and was started in 1863 taking five years to make.Many commemorative quilts were made after the
war, and reproduction Civil War quilts continue to inspire today.

Reference:Information on the 250,000 quilts made during the Civil War from Judy
Anne Breneman, 2007.

If you would like to know more about Rosey’s work do visitroseymoffatt.com/roseysbarndesigns/home/roseymof/public_html/roseysbarndesigns/

Thursday, 12 October 2017

A year or so ago, I came across a marvellous website called Trip Fiction. It was founded in 2012 (the year of the UK Olympics seems rather apt) but the germ of the idea had occurred to the founders, Tina and Tony, long before that. I've found it so useful and it's always nice to share a good thing so I asked Andrew Morris, who is now one of the team, to come along and tell my readers more. ﻿

Thank you so much, Harriet, for
inviting TripFiction to introduce ourselves to your own book-loving audience.

Books set in location offer great travel reading. TripFictionwas
created to make it easy to match a location with a book, and thanks to our
searchable database you can find a book relevant to any trip. TripFiction
features novels, travelogues and memoirs set in over 1,500 countries, regions,
and cities from around the world, so your destination is almost bound to
be covered.

TripFiction
lets you see a location through an author’s eyes.

Works of fiction generate a feel for,
and empathy with, a location that is quite different to that obtained through
conventional travel guides. Literature – modern or historical – can help us
absorb atmosphere and context in a way that no other written word finds
possible.

TripFiction was created to make
it easy for you to select literature that is most pertinent and
relevant to your trip in a way that has not been practical
before. You can search books by location, by author, by genre – and cross
reference across all three. So, apart from just selecting by location, you can
see which countries feature on your favourite author’s books, or whether a book
of a particular genre is set in a city you are about to visit.

The website does not just list titles.
Each title has a synopsis and frequently a lead review. It also carries
reviews and ratings by members of the TripFiction community – ratings are
given for both the content of the book and also for how well it portrays the
location itself.

And we carry interviews with authors,
talking about their work and how important a specific location, or a strong
general sense of place, might be in their writing. You'll remember this
lovely #TalkingLocationWith post,
Harriet, where you told TripFiction how Sri Lanka was the perfect setting for
your own Inspector de Silva series.

We also set up the TripFiction Book
Club (#TFBookClub) earlier this year to allow readers to win a book set in a
particular location, and for us all to read and comment on the book together
for a couple of months. So far we've travelled toSardinia,Prague,Central Americaand
theLake District.

And we are delighted that your very ownTrouble
in Nuala, the first in your Inspector de Silva series, will be the
#TFBookClub read for November & December, allowing readers to travel with
you to exotic Sri Lanka.

(There will be a limited number of free
paperback copies of the book as well as e-copies to give away to readers who
participate in the TF Book Club. In addition, the lucky winner of the
associated giveaway competition will win a copy of each of the three books in
the series and, for an extra relaxing read, a delightful elephant mug and some
Ceylon tea to drink out of it! Look out for more news soon.)

Thanks again for letting us introduce
TripFiction to your audience, Harriet, and we look forward to exploring the
world with them through books.